


A Matter Of Secrets

by jalendavi_lady



Series: Avatar TLA: Vision 'Verse [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Disabled Character, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-17
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-13 04:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jalendavi_lady/pseuds/jalendavi_lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zuko's been keeping the true magnitude of the damage to his face from everyone, but he can't hold it in much longer after Toph catches him in the deception. How will they react, and what will happen when the revelation is followed by a field trip <i>for</i> Zuko?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by a Festibility prompt by thingswithwings on Dreamwidth - "A:TLA: Zuko's never told anyone that he can't see out of his left eye anymore." - but does not precisely match the prompt.

They were all together in Iroh's tea shop, watching the sun begin to lower towards the horizon.

Or, rather, everyone but Toph was watching the sun begin to lower. She was busily bending Iroh's pile of broken cups back into something useful, and if the colors in the glazing didn't match up right, who was going to tell her?

Zuko had his eye on one that had a very interesting interplay of gold and red and the slightest hint of blue running across it. Yes, that would be just the cup for a Fire Lord... when he was here on Official Business instead of quietly vacationing with friends and his uncle and trying to blend in as well as he could.

He did appreciate the greetings the people of the city had given him. The widening of eyes one moment, and warm smiles the next. No big deal, no great production, just... them being okay with his presence and taking the earthy colors he was in as a sign he'd rather not make a scene.

(Besides, the Avatar was in town. There was no way Aang was hiding those air nomad markings now that he didn't have to, and there weren't exactly any other airbenders around. What was a Fire Lord compared to the Avatar who had been absent for a century?)

It was good to be able to relax, with people around he trusted completely.

He would never be as paranoid as Azula had been, even in the years before she began to truly lose her mind, but he knew it would be years, decades maybe, before all of the Fire Nation accepted the new way of things.

(How odd, that he felt the need for guards among his own people, but not in the middle of a nation that was not his to command.)

The orange of the sunset was playing in Mai's hair now, and he had to look at her and grin. Much as she hated the color - or said she did - it did make her look beautiful. Well, more beautiful.

Uncle Iroh was sitting just outside the door, sipping at a cup of tea and looking as content as Zuko had ever seen him.

Aang was providing running commentary on the air patterns that had gotten the clouds just right for that marvelous shade of red that was licking under them.

Sokka was trying to draw random passerby. He was miserable at realism, but Zuko did have to admit - very grudgingly, and in his own head only - that he was getting better at capturing distinctive features.

Suki was looking at Sokka's drawing, and giggling at each new attempt. Sokka didn't seem to mind all that much.

Katara was answering Aang with her own water vapor formation commentary on the clouds.

It was good to have more than members of just one nation in a room.

He wondered, briefly, if moments like this were how the Order of the White Lotus got started: benders just sitting, talking, sharing information about the places where the elements met.

"Hey, somebody? I need more tea?"

That was Toph, and he knew the 'somebody' was him. Much as she normally liked doing things for herself, she'd been enjoying bossing him around this afternoon.

And he did still owe her for burning her feet, even though... well...

There was a reason Fire Nation etiquette around all sleeping firebenders was to sit politely until someone woke up on their own, or to call their first name or a nickname if absolutely necessary. There were even separate quarters for the Fire Lord and the Fire Lord's spouse in the royal palace simply on the justification that the spouse needed someplace else to sleep if the Fire Lord was having twitchy nights.

It was not a position that lent itself to sleeping securely, after all.

And he honestly hadn't seen her then, either.

He got up and walked over. "The experimental blend again, Miss Bei Fong?"

"Please. And why did it take so long?"

"What? I came over as soon as you..."

"I've been waving at you for three whole minutes. I counted." She crossed her arms. "And I know from the way you were sitting that you should have been able to see me."

 _Should_ have been able, a long time ago. The light was too even in here, and light earth robes didn't create the contrast of the deep scarlets and crimsons of home. Even the greens didn't provide enough contrast.

And for all Toph was, well, Toph, she could be very quiet when she felt like it.

"My apologies, mighty earthbender."

It was the strangest thing. He wanted his friends to know, but he had never told anyone ever and after all they'd been through, well...

It would look like he hadn't trusted them back then.

And he'd gone into battle with Katara by his side without telling her that he had more limits to his sight than an eyelid that wouldn't open all the way. He'd _requested_ her by his side without telling her, or anyone else.

He'd trained beside Aang, and trained Aang, and sparred with Aang, all without telling him - Aang, who never wanted to hurt anything - that he was as limited as he was. Fire he could tell by contrast, except on very bright days. But earth? Air? Water?

But he couldn't have risked teaching Aang to attack lightly on the left. None of their enemies had been weak to the right, where Aang would have focused his attention.

 _My father would have killed him._ That was that.

Better accidental shame before an earthbender, even as Fire Lord, than a dead Avatar and a dead world.

Than a dead friend.

_And better than making Uncle cry from anything but happiness again._

He'd have to tell Mai eventually, if it ever looked like she _was_ going to be the one living in the spousal suite, but... how could he even tell her that the damage was more than just cosmetic? Even outside the royal family, even outside the firebenders, the Fire Nation had a streak of prejudice against those permanently limited by anything other than the wounds of war sustained for the Nation or of an Agni Kai _won_ going back a century.

A burn scar, even to the face, was one thing.

The mist and shadow he saw to his left was another.

And he'd seen men left for lesser defects.

"Zuko, why are your feet shaking?"

"It's nothing you need to worry about, Toph."

And it wasn't. Her limitations, even with her earthbending sight methods, were so much greater than his...

"If you don't want to bow and scrape, it's fine. I know the thing with my feet was an accident."

She didn't know how much of one - she'd approached from his bad side, and with a light source between them. He'd _had_ to react, one way or another.

"What thing with your feet?" Iroh asked.

"A burn accident in the middle of the night," he tried to explain. "She came out of nowhere, I was half asleep, and..."

"And." Simple understanding, from a man one did not decide to wake lightly.

He poured Toph's tea, then carried it over to her. "Here."

"Thanks." She grinned. "Table service by a Fire Lord. And my parents think they pamper me at home!"

They all laughed.

He had his left side to the door, but he could see their heads, backlit from the setting sun.

_Beautiful._

"Your feet are still shaking."

He heard someone move a chair, and saw someone stand up.

In three steps, he knew it was Katara. No one else had a no-nonsense charge like hers, even through the blur.

"What are you hiding? We all ended the war together, you've got to rebuild the world with Aang, and you're hiding something."

_That my secret could have gotten you killed, Katara._

_That I don't want Uncle to cry for me again._

_That Toph still has it so much worse than me._

_That Mai could leave me for this._

_That Fire Lords can't show this kind of weakness._

"Katara, you don't need to worry about..."

"We're _friends_ , Zuko. _Friends_ worry. We're all trying to help you and Aang fix the world together, remember? And that means that if anything is serious enough for you to worry about, it's serious enough for all of us to worry about."

There was a general cheer of agreement.

He felt his cheeks heat.

"And you and Aang especially shouldn't be keeping things from each other."

He closed his eyes.

Iroh remained silent. Zuko wasn't sure if he preferred his uncle's silence, or would have liked the old man's guidance.

Aang spoke up. "Zuko, could you tell just me? Not the others? And then if it's nothing to worry about, that's fine, and if it isn't..."

_Then it's time for another group session of pitying the new Fire Lord for what the last did to him. Again._

Only he didn't say that.

"It would be fine."

"No, it wouldn't," Toph said.

He hated it when she used her seismic sense against him. "Toph..."

"But he's going to do it anyway." She sipped at her tea.

He sighed, then turned to look at Aang. "Back room?"

* * *

They settled into chairs around the small table.

There was instantly a problem - Aang sat to Zuko's left.

Zuko tried to nonchalantly angle his chair towards Aang - it was a trick he'd used in small informal situations for years.

Only this time, it didn't work. He miscalculated, and the chair fell backwards.

"Zuko!"

"I'm fine." He got up and righted the chair. "I just fell." This time, he angled the chair correctly before he sat down.

"What is it?"

There was a long pause. Somehow this was harder than fighting.

He finally slumped his shoulders, raised a hand to his left cheek, and said, "I can barely see out of this eye."

"Barely?" There was a waver in his voice.

"It's a bit like trying to see through a fog cloud. Only it doesn't get any clearer when something is closer."

"But... Zuko, I could have hurt you! Why didn't you tell me before we started sparring?"

"Because I can still see _enough_. And my father had no such weakness."

"But it's not a..."

"On the battlefield, it _is_ a weakness. And that's what's mattered to the Fire Nation for the past hundred years." He looked away. "I've never told anyone. Not even Uncle Iroh."

"Mai doesn't know?"

"Aang, Fire Nation women leave men after injuries that weren't from battle or a victorious Agni Kai. Disfigurement, she's decided to stand. Impairment... I don't know."

"But Teo, and Toph, and..."

"Aang, the values of a culture fighting aggressively in a war are different than those of a culture fighting defensively in a war. You've sat in one of our schools now. You remember what the Fire Nation was like before the war began. You _know_."

Aang's face fell.

"And even with the war over, and the school books being replaced... The values Sozin's war gave us may well outlive me. I can't let my people know they are led by a man half-blinded. I'll leave enough records that the people will be able to find out after I am gone, but... it's too risky now."

Aang put a hand on his shoulder. "Zuko, even if that's what the rest of your nation would think about you, _we_ don't think like that." Aang smiled, brightening. "And after everything you did to stop the war, when your vision was already limited, maybe... maybe you'd be a good example of how limitations don't have to be limitations."

Silence.

"Okay, that didn't sound as good as it did when I was thinking it."

Zuko laughed, just a little. "I understood what you meant by it, anyway. But I can't risk that, not until I know I've got an heir capable of continuing what we've started who can hold the throne. My people and this world are more important than that one feature of Fire Nation culture."

"But..."

"And I've started trying to shift the culture, so that by the time I do have an heir I can trust, my people may just be ready to accept me."

Aang nodded. "Like how dust in the wind can erode mountains faster than thrown boulders can."

Zuko held up a finger, falling into teacher mode intentionally. "Unless Toph is the one throwing the boulders."

They both laughed.

It was good to have a friend. It was better still that it was safe to be vulnerable around his diplomatic partner in fixing the world.

Even if it was hard to accept that, as a child of the modern Fire Nation.

"So, will you tell the others?"

Zuko hung his head. "There's another thing... Uncle Iroh was there when it happened."

"What!?"

He nodded. "The entire royal family, and the court, was there. Mother was already gone. Uncle went with me into exile. He's the one who kept my bandages changed, who made sure I was drinking enough water that the burn wouldn't kill me, who stayed in the room with a hand on my shoulder while I cried at night from the pain." He looked away. "And I hid it from him when I realized my eye was damaged, that the blurriness wasn't just an aftereffect from having a bandage over it for so long."

"Zuko?"

"Hmm?"

"You have to tell him. And you have to tell Mai."

"Why?"

"Because not telling them is ripping you apart inside right now. And because you need someone within your own nation you can trust with this. And if you can't trust Mai..."

"...then why am I dating her, knowing all that a Fire Lady has to be to her people and to the Fire Lord?" He sighed. "Aang?"

"What?"

"Any of the past Avatars have any advice on how to reveal you've been hiding something without looking like the world's biggest jerk?"

"Avatars tend to be honest and open. And to not have much to hide. I think it comes with the job."

"And being Fire Lord means having everything to hide. It was worth a try." Zuko stood. "Well, you know, now."

Aang stood as well. "Will you tell any of the others?"

"In my own way."

Aang smiled at him.

* * *

"Hey, Zuko, your feet are still nervous."

It was in that moment that Zuko realized that besides telling Aang, and besides needing to tell Uncle Iroh and Mai, there was one more person in the group of friends he needed to talk to right now.

Because Toph had no way of knowing the ways he was compensating, and that meant all her seismic data about where he was looking was interpreted wrong.

And because she was the one most likely to actually understand.

"Toph, can I talk to you?"

"If it's about my feet or the tea, everything's fine. Don't worry about it."

"Toph."

"All right already."

They went to the back room, but neither sat down.

He wasn't going to accidentally deny Toph her truth-sensing capacity right now, not if he had the option.

"So what is it?"

"I couldn't see you waving at me."

"Zuko, I was waving my hands over my head. And I know from your weight on your feet that you should have been able to see me. And I can tell that you don't expect me to believe you."

"Toph, you were on my left side."

"And?"

_She's never seen the scar, or felt it. She may not know it covers my eye._

"And that's the side of my face where my father burned me."

She held out a hand. "Show me?" she asked.

He knelt to give her a better angle - they were practically eye to eye now, not that that would matter to Toph - then took her hand in his and guided it to his face.

"Your eyelid doesn't open all the way," she commented.

"And there was damage to the surface of my eye. I can see colors, lights, darks, large objects, heavy contrasts..."

"And not earthbenders who blend in with Earth Kingdom wall paint."

He smiled, knowing she would feel his face move. "Exactly. The sunset washed out everything inside the building."

"And you weren't going to tell anyone this?" Her voice held an edge.

"Toph, it's different in the Fire Nation. We've been a completely militarized society for a century. And our bending relies on sight. If you can't see where you're throwing fire..."

"...you might burn someone's feet."

"Uh... yeah. Sorry about that."

"Did Aang tell you to tell me?"

"No. I knew you were the most likely to understand. For the others, it's all theoretical. Even if they're blindfolded..."

"...they can always just take the blindfold off."

He nodded.

She hugged him, and he gave her a hug back.

"Just so you know," she said as they pulled away, "Aang _loved_ taking the blindfold off when I was teaching him earthbending."

"He would." Zuko chuckled, and shook his head. "Airbenders. Even when my people take to the air, we bother having something solid under our feet."

She laughed, then quieted. "Thank you for telling me this."

"Thank you for listening. And for understanding."

"And now I know not to assume you've seen something on your left."

"...You're going to use that as an excuse to make funny faces at me all the time, aren't you?"

"Zuko, I'm _twelve_. What do you think I'm going to do?"

He sighed.

* * *

By the time he and Toph returned, everyone but Iroh was back inside.

He could hear the night sounds of the city beginning outside.

He sighed, then started moving for the door.

"Uncle? Can we talk?"

Iroh looked up at him from his seat just outside the door.

"I've... I've been keeping something from you. And I shouldn't have been, but..."

"Zuko."

"Yes?"

The older man motioned him closer, and Zuko obeyed.

"I've known about your eye for a long time," he whispered. "Since the first time I changed the bandages, and saw." He hugged him. "And I was so proud when I saw you adapting your firebending to fit what you could still see."

"I've still got a little vision left in that eye," Zuko explained, quietly.

He felt his uncle nod. "And yet you and I were both taught to never mention such a thing as anything but a weakness. Even though you can hold a straight line of flame as rigidly on target as any other firebender I have ever heard of, and need not close an eye to aim it."

He felt his cheeks flush. "Thanks."

"And don't keep secrets from me again. I helped put you in your throne. I'm not about to take you out of it."

There was something in the old man's voice. Zuko pulled back. "Uncle?"

"If your grandfather had not died the way he did, and I remained his heir, I would have named you as mine."

Zuko's blood chilled, then burned, then chilled again. "But... Grandfather... Father..."

Iroh nodded, looking out at the setting sun. "There's a reason I never told anyone what I know about what happened the night your mother disappeared. I had just lost my son, and a slight against me was about to be punished by taking away the one other member of the royal bloodline left who I cared for."

Zuko was shocked. "Uncle, you knew..."

"Knew enough. I had seen war, and wanted no more of it once my son died. Either way, whether it was I or my brother who ruled, I knew you would take the throne one day. Even back then." He looked away. "I assumed the price of your mother's departure would keep you safe from your father.

"I was wrong. And it was you who paid for that."

"Uncle..."

There was a slender hand on his back. "And I figured out about your eye, too."

He turned. "Mai?"

"When you think no one is looking, or loosen up enough to stop caring, you don't keep your head facing forward. And when you really want to look at something, it gets quite pronounced. I was surprised you didn't have a crick in your neck after you came over when my parents were away."

He felt himself blush.

Iroh laughed. "Ah, young love."

"Uncle!"

He got up and walked into the building, smiling and chuckling the whole way.

Mai sat in the empty chair.

"So... you knew, and you didn't care?"

"Of course I cared!"

"I didn't mean it that way, I..."

"Zuko, I understand controlling Fire Nation noble parents. I have a pair myself." She graced him with a smile. "You have limits - everyone does - and you've learned to thrive within yours. How could I fault you for that?" She kissed his cheek and whispered in his ear, "Even if it does feel very strange to be oggled by a man with his head turned away. But I do think I could get used to that."

She embraced him and he embraced her, they kissed, and there was cheering from inside the tea shop.

Zuko turned around and yelled, "What are you, twelve years old?"

Aang and Toph immediately yelled back, "We _are_ twelve years old!"

That was when Mai laughed in his arms, and he could feel her smile against the scar on his cheek.

And the thought of letting the rest of his friends know - even of facing Katara - suddenly seemed a lot less scary.

* * *

It was after the sun finished setting when Zuko and Mai finally walked back inside.

Aang and Toph were noticeably absent. Zuko raised his eyebrow.

"They already went to bed," Katara told him. "And the rest of us should be thinking about following. Just how far did you travel today to get here?"

"Far enough," he admitted.

He could hear his uncle putting up cups in the storeroom.

"So, there seems to be a lot of talking in private going on today," Sokka commented. "Mind sharing? Or are you going to talk with the rest of us one on one too?"

He sat down in a chair. "I've been keeping a secret. And I can't stand keeping it any more."

Mai put her hand on his shoulder in silent support.

"Secrets tend to get like that." Suki leaned on a table with her elbows. "So, spill."

"This can't get back to my people."

Katara walked closer. "Secrets from your own people? It's a little soon for that, isn't it?"

He sighed. "Not with the Fire Nation's value system. Which I can't change overnight - it took a century to warp into what it is."

"It can't be that bad. The secret or the system."

Mai spoke up. "It can be. This is not an idle worry."

"Then what is it, Zuko? We can help."

He hung his head at the emotion in Katara' voice, remembering the danger he had put her in.

Mai squeezed his shoulder.

"I can barely see anything out of this eye." He touched his cheek.

There was silence for a moment.

"And that's why you didn't see Toph?" Sokka asked. "And this is supposed to be something you need to hide?"

"We've been a military nation for a hundred years. That's where our current cultural values have come from. Any weakness..."

"Zuko, I saw you nearly take your sister out. 'Weakness' is not a word I'd ever use when talking about you." Katara pulled a chair up and sat in front of him. "Do you think that way about Teo? Toph?"

"I've had to learn to think differently. My people are another story."

"You could be an inspirational example..."

"Suki, Aang's already tried to convince me of that."

"And?"

"And I'm waiting until I have an heir I can trust to continue the changes. In case the people decide to reject me."

"Zuko, you stopped the war. There's no way they would oust you from the throne."

"I'm not sure enough of that yet."

He heard Katara gasp.

_Here it comes._

"Is that what happened to Toph's feet? You couldn't see her and firebent anyway?"

He relaxed and nodded. "I had announced my treason to my father's face during the eclipse. I expected to be hunted by his men. I did not expect any of you to come looking for me at night. By the time I heard her voice, or saw she was wearing Earth Kingdom colors, it was already over. When I offered help, she started chucking rocks at my head."

Everyone laughed. Sokka told him, "Yeah, that sounds like Toph."

There was silence again.

"Zuko, why didn't you tell me before we fought Azula? Or before anything else we did together?"

"Because I've been like this for years, and my bending style has changed to compensate."

Mai squeezed his shoulder again. "And because firebenders haven't spoken about such things openly for a hundred years."

"And yet you bend the most dangerous element." Sokka's voice was almost mocking.

"Permanent injuries from service in the war or from victorious Agni Kai battles are accepted, even praised as badges of honor. This was neither."

"It sounds like a lousy way to live," Katara told him.

Iroh called out, "Why do you think I retired here?"

"Because if you'd retired back at home, you wouldn't get to play Pai Sho all day long," Zuko shot back.

The laughter that followed was one of the most comforting things he'd ever heard.

It was good to have friends. Real friends.


	2. Chapter 2

The tea house was full of yawning teenagers.

"I guess I should have warned you all that Uncle is an early riser before we all decided to spend the night here instead of in an inn?"

There was a chorus of sleepy affirmations.

Zuko sat down at the table where Sokka had piled his drawings last night. They were all just of random passerby, and it looked like Sokka was actually getting better when he wasn't trying too hard.

There was one, an older woman carrying a basket... there was something about it... something about her...

"Mai, can you come look at something?"

"What is it?"

"One of Sokka's drawings."

"Don't mock my art this early in the morning!"

Mai came over, and Zuko pointed at the woman.

"I've seen that brooch design before. I can't remember where. It was a long, long time ago. I was small. I don't remember who was wearing it."

"Same here."

"Small enough neither of us would have been old enough to leave... UNCLE!"

"What?"

"We need you to look at one of Sokka's drawings from last night. We think we recognize something in it, but neither of us knows where." Mai's voice was wavering.

He was trying not to hope. It could have been anyone. The styles at court changed so often, at least the ones not set by long tradition. The brooch could have changed hands a dozen times since the day he'd seen it. It might be a design that was copied throughout the nation, but that had gone out of style.

It could be anything. Anything at all.

But then his uncle was there, and the look in his eyes told Zuko everything.

"Sokka's horrible at drawing people, isn't he?" the old man finally said, his own voice wavering.

"HEY!"

"Sokka, this is serious!" Zuko ran a hand backwards through his hair. "Whose was it?"

"That brooch was a commissioned piece. There was no other I ever saw that had that kind of gilt wire framing around the flame emblem." Iroh looked over at where the others stood. "Sokka, did you get the least bit creative when drawing the jewelry people were wearing?"

He shook his head. "No. I was trying to draw that accurately. No elaboration."

"Including the Fire Nation brooch a woman with long braided hair was wearing?"

"Especially that one. It was a fascinating pattern."

Katara walked over. "General Iroh, what...?"

"Zuko, that was the brooch your father commissioned for your mother the day you were born. They went out of style in court when you were four, and your grandfather pressured her into not wearing it again. It was one of the things missing the morning after she left."

"How did we not see...?" There was concern in Mai's voice.

He could hear his pulse in his ears.

"That was one of the first ones I drew last night. Everyone else was still inside."

The right side of the world was getting as blurry as the left.

"Which way was she going?"

He felt himself tilting over...

"ZUKO!"

* * *

There was something wet on his forehead.

"Unh?"

"Just lie still," Katara told him. "If you try to sit up too soon, you're just going to pass out again."

"What... what happened?"

"You passed out from emotional shock," Mai told him, dabbing at his forehead with the wet cloth. "A little more swooning and it would be like something out of a play."

"...Please don't tell the Ember Island Players." _Between this, Shyu, the fact it still hasn't been three months since I became Fire Lord... Ugh._

"Zuko, there's no way there isn't going to be a 'Return Of The Lady Mother' play if we find her." Mai's voice was firm. "It's been too long since we had one. It will matter too much to the people."

"'Lady Mother'?"

"It's the traditional title of the Fire Lord's mother," he explained. "We haven't had one since before Avatar Roku returned to the people from his journey across the world."

"And we haven't had a Fire Lady at court since Ozai was younger than Aang. She was so cowed by Azulon that by the end, she wasn't doing anything a Fire Lady should. Or so the ladies of the court told me when Ozai couldn't hear."

"And before her, Sozin's wife appears to be the family member my sister takes after most strongly." Zuko had memorized that part of the histories only recently, trying to track what had gone so dreadfully wrong to his country. "To find a good, strong, _sane_ Fire Lady, it takes looking back to when the Avatar was last from the Earth Kingdom."

"But that was over three hundred years ago."

"Exactly. And there hasn't been a woman who ascended to the throne herself since before the previous airbender Avatar died." He closed his eyes. "I want my mother, but my people need her more."

"Women are symbolically linked to the hearthfire in our culture. To everyday life. We need strong women in the Fire Lord's court again, to remind the people of that aspect of fire." He could hear Mai's smirk in her voice. "And, of course, to keep the Fire Lord in line with his feet planted on the ground."

He didn't contest the point, mainly because he agreed with it. He rolled onto his side. "Has anyone started looking for her?"

"Not yet. Sokka's out front, making sure someone spots her if she walks back by here."

"Iroh thinks he shouldn't go looking, because she might think he sought revenge for whatever happened to Azulon. He thinks it would be best if you were one of the searchers. And I told him I'd go with you."

"Thanks, Mai."

"And Toph offered to be our guide."

"Good idea. This isn't our nation, and she's noble-born here."

"Exactly." Toph walked in and plopped down next to him. "Plus, this building is stone, and so are the streets. So long as nothing happens to my feet, we won't be able to get too badly lost. If that brooch has changed hands, it may take a while to trace it back to her."

He sat up, and tried to ignore the spinning in his head.

Mai pressed a cup into his hand. "Iroh said this would help."

He drank the tea. "Thanks. What are the others doing?"

"Sokka made copies of the brooch drawing," Katara told him. "Suki, Aang, and I are going to be a second search group while he and Iroh stay here."

"That makes one non-bender, one firebender, one person with seismic sense, and one person with the authority to ask her to come back in each group," he reasoned out.

"And what does that make me?"

"A very appreciated set of eyes. Katara, there aren't words for how much this means to me..."

"You helped me deal with the loss of _my_ mother." Her voice was firm. Then, she smiled. "Besides, _someone_ has to have raised you to be the man you've become, and it certainly wasn't your father. And Iroh was off at war while you were little. So it must have been her."

_You have no idea._

All the proverbs, all the stories. The little aphorisms that made so much sense... except that they contradicted his official education, made him unsure of his judgment in front of Azulon, muddled his sense of history.

Then he'd learned where she must have gotten it all from: her sad, lonely grandmother she only spoke about in whispers late at night when he couldn't sleep, and his own maternal grandfather who had died when Zuko was five and had never once seemed comfortable around his son-in-law Ozai - or anyone else from the royal family, now that Zuko thought about it and knew there was an actual reason behind it.

And he had remembered the quiet accidental revelation when he was nine that his mother's family had been noble refugees from Roku's Island during the volcanic eruption.

He had never made the connection. So many nobles had small estates on outlying islands - he'd had no reason to think it had been any different during Sozin's rule.

Sozin thought he'd won the night Roku died. But the pair huddled in a boat who had watched their husband and father betrayed to die as ash rained down on their heads had, so far as Zuko could tell, played a much longer game in the dark decades since.

And even though he hadn't claimed descent from them yet, not even in private, not even to Mai, he was so very proud of them.

"It was her. Her and the wisdom she inherited from her own family." He sighed. He couldn't afford to dwell on the long past now, not with her possibly so close. Not now that he and Iroh were the only ones who knew just yet. "Wisdom my people need again. And I know she didn't have the time to pass even half of it on to me."

Katara put a hand on his shoulder. "We'll find her if she's here to find."

* * *

It was afternoon before they started out. "Why did we have to leave so late? Aang's group left before lunch."

"Because it wasn't until after lunch that your uncle was sure you weren't going to fall over again. And if it had been _me_ making that decision, we'd have waited until tomorrow."

"Mai, I'm fine."

"Says the man who scared the living daylights out of me before I even had a chance to eat breakfast."

Toph was walking in front since she knew the street layout of the city best. Mai was walking to Zuko's left, and much as he'd have preferred to see her clearly, he knew that meant they had at least one person's clear vision on the entire spread of street in front of them.

And they had a lead now. A shopkeeper had been able to tell them where the woman who currently wore that brooch liked to buy groceries in the evening - and that she almost always wore it.

His heart raced. Another few hours, maybe even sooner, and...

"Calm down, or you're going to fall over again," Toph warned him.

He glared at the back of her head.

* * *

They finally sat down at a nearby cafe near sunset, after several hours circling the neighborhood.

People said they recognized the brooch, but had no more details about the woman, not even when she'd moved into the area.

Not even a hint of a name.

"So, what's on the menu?" Toph asked.

"Earth Kingdom cuisine," Zuko assured her. "What passes for Fire Nation food here tastes nothing like at home. And I do have to admit, I did get used to food that isn't buried in spices while I was on the run."

"And I've come to like it as well."

"So, I don't have to ask you two to read _and_ translate the menu?"

"Nope."

"Sweetness."

He and Toph had their backs to the window, while Mai was looking out it, just in case.

They had ordered and their food had arrived when Toph suddenly murmured, "Someone's coming in from the street. Very determined, very anxious, and I think she _might_ be armed."

Mai glanced up and her eyes widened instantly in recognition.

His pulse thundered in his ears.

He was suddenly intensely self-conscious.

How would she react to what his father had done to him? To the damage to his eye that he'd only managed to talk about for the first time in his life last night?

How would she react to what he'd done with the life she'd given him, the life she'd been banished to save? She was the granddaughter of an Avatar. What would she do when she heard about him chasing Aang around the world?

"I've heard someone was looking for me," came the voice behind him that was just different enough from his memory to be jarring.

Mai nodded. "We were. We needed to ask you something about that brooch."

There was silence.

"We'd like to know where you got it. Someone we knew had one much like it."

"It was a gift, a long time ago, from a man I thought loved me. Why did you need to... Mai?"

Mai was actually _grinning_. "Yes. It's me. And this is Toph. And I hope you remember the jerk I'm dating..."

"Hey!"

There was a very loud gasp, and then he found himself hauled up and hugged by a large green and brown blur from his left.

"Zuko?" she breathed into his ear.

He nodded, not at all surprised he was crying. "It's me." He wrapped his arms around her as well as he could. "It's me."

"What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you."

"We and some friends from the end of the war got together at Iroh's tea shop last night," Toph explained. "One of them was sketching passerby for art practice. Zuko glanced at them this morning and thought he recognized the brooch."

"And then Uncle explained what it was. And I had to..."

"Shh." She squeezed him a little harder. "I'm here."

* * *

Toph had switched seats to the other side of the table so that his mother could sit on his good side. Not that Toph had said anything about it, but it was fairly clear to Zuko that was her intention.

"It's good to see you're okay." He smiled. "I was so worried, and Father wouldn't tell me anything about where he thought you might have gone except that there was a chance you were alive." _And then great-grandfather wouldn't even directly confirm that!_

"And since he actually has a day job now, he can't just go off and do world-wide searches for people anymore," Mai joked.

"'Anymore'? Zuko?"

"Father banished me for speaking out of turn in a war meeting when I was thirteen. He gave me only one way to ever come home." He hung his head. "And I took it."

"Which was technically a good thing in the end," Toph piped up.

Zuko was beginning to wonder just how much emotional information she could pick up through her feet.

"After all, if you hadn't been running around like that, a lot of very important things wouldn't have happened. And some things that would have destroyed everything would have."

"True," he admitted.

"And you wouldn't have been ready to take over when your father fell." That was Mai's contribution. "You wouldn't have known what _you_ wanted to do with power once you got it."

His mother ruffled his hair.

The guilt doubled. He hadn't known who they _were_ then, but still...

And this was after Roku's spirit had as much as told him to stop the guilt trips. He didn't want to think too hard about what this would feel like if he hadn't received that particular visitation. But he couldn't use that visit as a defense against what he'd done - he hadn't told anyone he'd even had the vision, after all - and moreover, he refused to hide his errors behind his connection to Roku.

He was very glad that the cafe was still fairly empty.

"Huh, looks like someone else got the same lead we did," Mai said, looking straight forward and obviously referring to something in the street outside.

Toph drummed her feet on the ground.

"Hey!" came Aang's voice from somewhere behind him.

"What did you do?" his mother whispered in his ear during the distraction.

He whispered back, "Mother, for three years... I hunted the Avatar."

"Zuko!" She sounded absolutely scandalized, and he felt her pull away. "I thought I raised you better than that."

"It was my only way home. I was trying to be the perfect son for Father ever since you left. And I didn't _know_ , not until Uncle told me."

That was when he noticed Mai was looking at him funny.

Before he could say anything, even just start to say _anything_ , the congratulatory hugs and cheering had started.

Aang hugged him from the left. "You found her!"

"Yes."

He saw his mother's eyes widen. "Zuko...?"

"Mother, this is Avatar Aang. Aang, this is my mother, the lady Ursa."

"...There's a long story there, isn't there?" At least she seemed to have calmed down.

"Yep!" they chorused.

Zuko took advantage of the rest of the introductions to manage eating most of his meal. He'd missed breakfast and was feeling it. He saw Mai and Toph following his lead.

"And you're all staying in the back rooms of the Jasmine Dragon?"

"Just for as long as we're all in town," Suki assured her. "And Iroh's gotten the damage to the building from the battle completely repaired now."

"The building his apartment was in was destroyed, though," Zuko told her. "I think his painting of Lu Ten and his favorite tea setting were about all of value that he could salvage. And a few pieces of clothing. So he's staying in the Jasmine Dragon too right now. He wouldn't even have a drawing of Yu Wen if I hadn't gotten the court painter to make a copy of the official one for him."

"Zuko and I are heading back to the Fire Nation once the week is out," Mai told her.

"And I'm following a few days later, if Zuko still wants me to look at the old records."

"I told you, any time you want to be a good little airbender monk and seal yourself up with musty old scrolls for a week, I'll be glad to show you where I found the interesting ones."

And he would be more than glad to let Aang handle the reading for once. He was sick of neck aches from trying to compensate for his eye when there were sages walking through the archives at irregular intervals. Aang wouldn't have that problem.

_And you wouldn't have them either, if you'd swallow your pride and admit to the Fire Sages that you can only read on one side. They wouldn't let anyone else into the archives, other than the Avatar, if you ordered them not to while you were there._

Get Shyu a bit more recovered from his ordeal, and he'd help you gladly - and he's not going to judge you for your eyesight, not after what happened to him. And especially not if you tell him you lineage first.

"Suki and I are going back home with my brother Sokka so he can introduce her to Gran-Gran and the rest of the village. And then I'm going back to the Fire Nation for a few days to check on someone."

"I have an Earth Rumble title to defend."

Zuko saw his mother's jaw drop. They all laughed.

"Mother, even after everything she did to help end the war, Toph is still best known as The Blind Bandit."

"Oh, I've heard of her. I even attended once. If I hadn't been trying to keep a low profile, I'd have tried to get an autograph."

Toph was grinning ear to ear.

"Toph, you can't write," Katara reminded her.

"So? A member of the Fire Nation royal family wanted my autograph. That's international acclaim!"

His mother chuckled.

There was a long pause that hung in the air.

Mai's eyes met his, and he nodded slightly. _Better if she does it._

"Lady Mother..."

"Mai, I was banished. That title..."

"Is still yours, by law and by tradition." Zuko's voice was firm. "I know. I checked. And banishments can be overturned. _Especially_ given the circumstances. Do you have any idea how many laws he was breaking?"

"Zuko..."

"You could come home. We haven't had a Lady Mother in so long..."

"And yet the nation goes on." He could hear the change in her voice. She wasn't arguing, so much as...

 _As making sure I know what I'm asking, and why._ "Goes on without so much of what we used to be. I've been in the archives. Did you know we'd forgotten what the true source of firebending is?"

He saw the corner of her mouth lift in a wry smile. "So I learned at my grandmother's knee when I was a child."

"And I _know_ those sayings you used to tell me when no one else was listening wasn't even the half of it."

"Not even a fourth. It wasn't _safe_." Her voice had dropped to not much more than a murmur.

Aang was looking _very_ confused.

"Later," Zuko silently mouthed at him, and meant it. If Aang was going to be working with both of them, the truth was now unavoidable.

_And Shyu, when we get back to the Fire Nation. I'd hoped to tell him first, eventually, but there's no avoiding this now._

I can't ask my mother to stay hidden any longer. Not when there's no good reason to.

And, admittedly, this was going to be a lot easier than telling anyone about his eye had been yesterday.

* * *

It was a very long walk back to the Jasmine Dragon.

They had to make one stop along the way, where his mother took Toph, Katara, and Suki down a side street and around a corner before returning thirty minutes later carrying her possessions.

"It wouldn't have been safe for Zuko or Mai," she'd explained, without any comment on Aang's exclusion, as they evened out the loads. "And I didn't want to have to come back here after being seen with Zuko and Iroh. Too many questions."

 _Other families from Roku's island, and likely as prejudiced against Sozin's bloodline as Grandfather probably was,_ Zuko had deduced. _Not anyone she wants the current Avatar to meet._

It was very late when they finally trudged up the hill toward Iroh's teashop.

It had closed hours ago, but all the lamps were still bright, shining against the dark sky.

Sokka was nowhere to be seen - _of course he won't see anything more in this light, and everyone on the street has gone home anyway_ \- but Iroh was sitting out on the bench, hands folded and clearly waiting.

Ursa ran, the bedroll slung over one shoulder bouncing with every step.

Zuko was only a few steps behind her.

And then her arms were around Iroh's neck, Iroh's arms were around her waist - time had only widened the difference in height between them - and Iroh was mumbling softly to her, "I know where you come from, you're safe here, _please_ believe you're safe here."

And then all three members of the royal family were hugging and crying, together for the first time since Iroh had left for the war.


	3. Chapter 3

Zuko was still happily basking in the hug with his mother and uncle when Ursa gently eased him away.

"I need to talk with you alone, my son," she told him quietly.

Iroh seemed suddenly concerned.

"The lighting in the street is horrible, Brother-In-Law."

He nodded, turning grim.

Ursa eased Zuko toward one of the rooms in back, keeping an arm firmly around him.

_She... Toph had her sitting on my good side at the cafe, so I could see her. Except for when she ran towards us..._

Mother hasn't seen the scar. Not properly.

"The fourth one on the left is the one I've been sleeping in, Mother. You can put your things down in there for now. Mai will probably offer to share hers with you."

He could hear his voice shaking.

"I figured you would want me to get this over in private," she whispered. "Since we have the choice."

His pulse was racing and he was feeling slightly lightheaded. "I need to sit down."

"Zuko?" Her voice had as much concern in it as it had the time he'd managed to practice a firebending form straight down a set of stairs when he was seven and had skinned both his knees _spectacularly_.

"Lightheaded. Fainted this morning when Uncle saw the brooch drawing and told me what it was..."

She guided him into the room, and helped him sit down on his bedroll, still not leaving his side. "Lean forward. It should help."

He did. "That feels better."

"Good. Don't worry about this. The saying goes 'a face only a mother could love' not 'a face not even a mother could love', remember?"

They both laughed nervously.

"I saw the reward posters months ago," she admitted. She rubbed his back between his shoulders. "We can take as long as you need. After all, it's been a rough day for you."

He thought through all that had happened last night, all the misplaced worries and all of the simple acceptance then and today.

He thought about his frustration at not being able to find anything out about where she might have gone, much less where she was.

"Yeah, Mom. It has been." He felt tears start running down his cheeks. "A rough day, a rough few months, a rough _year_." He laughed weakly. "It's almost been a year since Sokka and Katara found Aang. We may have to throw a rebirthday party for him or something..."

And then he was sobbing, and his mind was going over just how many times he had been five minutes or less from dying since that day on the ice, and he was trying to stop because it was going to make her worry...

And that was when her pressure on his back leaned him forward _just enough_.

Anxiety spiked, and the fact his mind had already been on his face recently did not help that one bit.

"Zuko?"

He forced himself to sit up again, scooted back the foot or two to the wall, and then leaned against it.

His mother gasped, and he understood instantly just what he had done when he sat up.

Seconds later, she had him hauled into a hug again, only this time they were both leaning againt the wall. "Oh, Zuko. I honestly hoped you'd be safe..."

Zuko quietly decided to wait until later to let her know how much vision he had lost. The way he looked now was more than hard enough on her. "It's not your fault Father went power-mad."

"I should have realized he had the potential."

Silence.

"And I _don't_ mean because of his bloodline. There were signs when you were small. They didn't seem like anything then, but the potential was there."

"I was too young to be in that meeting, anyway. I should have listened to Uncle. I should have waited."

She held him close against her. "And he should have merely chastised you for being where you did not belong."

He blinked. "You heard what happened?"

"Zuko, our family does still have allies inside the Fire Nation. I heard. And you were _very_ brave. I was proud of you, once I'd heard the details."

"Which details?"

She moved away slightly. "That you spoke out to save the lives of soldiers. And that even when your father was standing over you, _you never took those words back_. It caused quite a stir in the family, especially after my father's less than complimentary predictions for your future."

He hung his head a little and felt his cheeks heat.

"And I guess I know the reason why now. Someone was keeping me from knowing what the terms of your banishment were, Zuko. I don't know who, I don't know why, but..."

"Someone wanted to defend you from my mistakes." The words hurt.

She reached out a hand, playfully fluffed back the bangs hanging over his scar, and then cupped her palm around that side of his face. "Or didn't want me worrying about the choices Ozai was putting in front of you. Back then, we had no idea Aang was coming back, ever." She sighed. "By then we knew your sister really had taken after the worst the royal family had produced or married themselves to, and you hadn't. Maybe... maybe one of the older cousins wanted the rest of the family to have hope you would be returning as heir."

"And yet you kept me, Mai, and Aang away tonight."

"Zuko, it's one thing for them to mentally support you as new Fire Lord of a land most of them have never seen. To let a descendant of Sozin know the location of, much less lead him into, the building where their children sleep? Especially knowing that you do still have a good relationship with Uncle Iroh? That will take time." She smiled wanly. "And your friends don't know yet. Having the current Avatar in the neighborhood..."

They both laughed.

"It would have gotten out of hand?"

"The moment he walked in the door."

"That seems to be Aang's effect just about everywhere."

She chuckled. "Well, that arrow _is_ rather striking."

"Mother?"

"Yes, Zuko?"

"How are we going to handle telling them?"

Her hand dropped and her smile went away.

"I don't want to hide from Aang anymore. I _can't_."

"Zuko, to be honest... I didn't even know how I was going to tell _you_. And you had at least some of the childhood training I had to make it easier." She laughed nervously. "I don't even know if I can talk about it with your uncle in the same room..."

"Then don't. Just us kids. Aang, me, and the others. Basic family history, without directly claiming descent. And then..." Zuko had to stop a moment. "And then I'll pull Aang aside and tell him how I found out. Because he needs to know that the moment I claim..."

She nodded. "You probably know best how to break it to him. You're the Fire Lord and his friend."

"His sifu, too." He took a deep breath. "Why is this so much harder than I thought it would be?"

She smiled at him. "Scared?"

"Yes."

"Me too. Let's go before it gets any later."

* * *

The others, minus Iroh, were waiting for them in the largest back room, with the table Zuko had sat at with Aang only just yesterday pushed aside so everyone could fit on the floor.

More than a few of them were stretched out with pillows.

"Iroh's making more tea," Toph reported. "He seemed to think you two would need it later."

His mother took a ragged breath. "We will."

She sat in a chair in front of them all, as Zuko sat next to Mai against the wall near the door.

"So, now that we're in private, I guess we should tell you _everything_ that _we've_ been involved in this year." Aang's face was bright and Zuko's mood darkened.

It was only a matter of time until he'd have to talk to Aang, and there was no way even Aang could take Zuko's admission _that_ well.

* * *

"It's odd," Ursa said quietly after the gush of stories was over.

"It's all odd," Toph laughed, and even Zuko and Mai chuckled.

What else could anyone say, after all, about a year as crazy as the one when the Avatar returned?

"No, that's not what I meant." She stared down at her tea. "We were always told to hold on, 'even if the sun fades, moon fails, waters rise, or world burns'. And it all came to pass this past year. We used to giggle at it, her way of telling us to never give up..." She smiled, wistfully. "But it all came _true_."

"Who?" Katara asked, leaning forward and smiling.

Zuko felt his muscles tense. He knew what was coming.

"The lady Ta Min."

The questions in the room erupted.

Mai silently looked at Zuko, a piercing question clear in her eyes.

 _She's figured it out._ Zuko was sure of it.

He closed his eyes and nodded, ever so slightly.

He opened his eyes to find an odd kind of triumphant _something_ in her eyes.

_As if being one popped question away from being Fire Lady Assumptive wasn't quite enough._

Ursa raised a hand. "Yes, that Ta Min. She arranged the survivors of her and... Roku's village in an attempt to keep hope _and_ memory alive. A hundred and thirteen years whispering in the dark, and she was right."

Silence.

She turned to Suki. "When Avatar Kyoshi died, your people got to keep the things she'd given you."

Suki smiled. "Of course. I'm one of her warriors."

"'Of course'." It was followed by a bitter laugh.

"Oh!" Aang seemed have gotten what she was telling them. Zuko felt a kind of grim satisfaction that he was picking up on such things quicker now than he had last year.

Ursa nodded at him. "Roku had defied Sozin. More than once, and against the war. In the end, Sozin had won. Even if..." She shook her head. "Even if there had been no foul play involved, simply outliving the Avatar would have been enough. To claim allegiance to anything... Roku had stood for in the days after war was declared outright was to risk _everything_. Those who had been on the island knew what Sozin was capable of, and hid as quickly as they could. They had hidden for a decade and more before the comet came."

Aang was slightly shaking.

"And there were some who didn't hide, who wouldn't or couldn't or finally couldn't take it anymore. One of my uncles..."

There were tears in her eyes, and she dabbed at them with a napkin.

Katara hugged herself.

"We depended on stories without names to pass our history along and kept alive what we could of our culture. There tend to be revivals of old things around Avatars," she said with a smile and nod towards Aang. "I always thought it might be related to the relic toy tests used to detect new Avatars - the ancient is already familiar, many lifetimes over. There were lullabies and folksongs popular on that island that hadn't been heard outside a few isolated families in several hundred years. And of course my son hasn't heard those, because singing 'The Turtleducks' Ball' in the palace would have been absolutely suicidal."

Suki looked sick.

"So Zuko didn't know where your stories came from?" Toph asked.

"When I was nine," Zuko admitted, "I overheard something that made me think Grandfather - that would be Mother's father, not Fire Lord Azulon - had been on a boat the night Roku's island erupted. He didn't like me very much."

"Zuko," his mother told him, "there was nothing you could have done to make him like you. He was maybe Aang's age that night. He was horrified that Ozai was attracted to me and that he couldn't find a way out when Fire Lord Azulon attempted to arrange a marriage. He was especially horrified that I didn't keep fighting it, not once I started thinking your father might not be like his ancestors. Wrong as I was, I thought it. And those early years with him _were_ happy ones." She sighed. "So long as you had even one drop of Sozin's blood in you, my father was going to reject you. It was not how hard bringing you into the world was. Nor anything about the child you were then. Just who you were descended from."

It was something Zuko had already guessed somehow, but it was good in a strange way to hear that he really hadn't done anything worth the old man's anger.

(He had always been very, very scary when he had gotten angry.)

"But why would he think like that?" Toph asked. "Zuko was just a kid."

Ursa looked straight into her son's eyes, casually, and Zuko knew that was his signal to leave.

Mai reached for and squeezed his hand.

Zuko squeezed back. He took a deep breath. "Aang."

Aang looked over his shoulder. "What?"

"You. Me. Talk outside."

"But..."

"Aang, go with him." Ursa's voice was almost a whisper.

Aang finally nodded and got up. He and Zuko left the room.

Iroh was pacing in the main room of the tea shop, two pots of tea sitting on the table beside a pile of Toph's multicolored mugs.

He didn't say anything as they walked past the door.

Neither of them said anything until after they'd walked into the room with Zuko's bedroll on the floor and Ursa's propped up in the corner.

"Thinking you might faint again?" Aang joked, obviously trying to break the tension in the air.

"I might," Zuko said, absolutely serious.

"So, why are we in here when everyone else is still listening to your mom?"

"Because I need to be the one to explain something to you." He tried to find a place to start. "Azula never really listened to her stories. She never had to decide between Mom's stories and our father's and tutors' instruction..."

He tried to explain all the times in his childhood he had fallen short because he had to hesitate to chose or chose wrong.

He tried to explain what had happened between his mother, his father, and Azulon.

"And then I turned thirteen. There was a war meeting. Crown princes aren't supposed to even attend those until they are fifteen, but there's a tradition of sneaking in early anyway - Uncle and my father both had stories about doing it. I was supposed to keep quiet, but one of the generals... he was going to put new recruits at a defensive weakness in the front lines, and let them draw the Earth Kingdom away from a place he wanted to attack. He was just going to throw their lives away..."

He raised a hand to his face.

"That was when this happened. I checked later. Those new recruits ended up on the front line anyway. All of them died, and the general _lost_ ground in that battle. It wasn't even for a reason..."

"Wait. _That_ was why your father made you hunt me?"

"Yeah." Zuko looked away. "While I was banished, I was legally out of the line of succession. And if I had captured you and brought you in, well... he would have known I'd embraced being like him. And when everyone thought you were dead, and thought I'd helped cause that - or had done it myself, since that's what Azula told everyone - I was welcome home."

"And then you went to the other war meeting, and heard about the plan for the comet."

"No. Before that. Right around the solstice, someone left a message in my room."

Zuko felt his voice start to go, but he couldn't give in to the emotions he was feeling. He had to get far enough for Aang to understand before he broke down.

He did pull his legs up, wrap his arms around his lower legs, and bury his face in his knees. It helped... a little, but enough.

"It said I needed to know how my great-grandfather died, and that the secret histories of the Fire Nation were kept in the catacombs under the capital's temple."

He heard Aang scoot closer. "How did Sozin die?"

"He confessed in his last testament. He regretted what he did, but mostly because he was afraid the next Avatar would come for vengeance. I don't think he would have built or kept that cell we found Shyu in if he'd really repented."

The room they had found Fire Sage Shyu in had been designed to hold anyone up to a full realized Avatar, and Zuko knew Aang knew that.

There was a long pause.

"Zuko?"

"Yeah?"

"That isn't what I asked. How did Sozin die?"

"He was over a hundred years old. A servant found him cold in the morning."

"He died in his sleep? After everything he did?"

Zuko nodded as well as he could with his face pressed into his knees.

"But... that message... what... ?"

And then Avatar Aang _squeaked_. If the situation hadn't been so serious, it would have been hilarious.

As it was, Aang's reaction only made Zuko hug his knees more firmly. He didn't want to see.

It was then that Zuko couldn't hold in his emotions any longer and started weeping too hard to talk.

"Zuko?"

Aang was shaking his shoulder.

_He shouldn't be having to deal with this so young. He's just a child..._

"Sifu?"

Aang sounded scared.

_I should have let Mom tell him. I should have made sure the others were around._

The new guilt only made things worse.

"Sifu Hotman?"

Zuko lifted his head a little. "How many times do I have to tell you?" His voice was breaking all over the place.

Aang had tears running down his cheeks now, but there was this intense _relief_ in his eyes as he knelt next to Zuko.

"Oh, what the hell. C'mere." He pulled Aang close.

"That was why you left?"

Zuko nodded. "I couldn't stay... not once I found out about that plan. And I couldn't tell you or the others, not then. Not when I couldn't prove it. It..."

"It would have looked like you were _using_ Roku's memory."

"Yeah."

They both laughed nervously, just enough to break the last of the tension in the room.

Zuko dabbed at his eyes with his sleeve.

It was over. He'd done it, and they were still okay.

"We need to tell Shyu."

"I'd actually been planning on telling him first, once we got back. He... he couldn't have taken it when we got him out of prison."

"No," Aang agreed. "He would have thought it was a trick."

"He would have tried to struggle before the waterbenders came. He would have thought _you_ were in danger."

Aang nodded. "That would have been bad."

"Aang, it would have cost him his legs or _killed_ him outright."

The look on his face was heartbreaking.

"You really are still just a child."

"And you're still just a teenager."

They grinned at each other and stood up.

"I'm glad we're friends now," Zuko admitted.

"Me too." Aang tilted his head. "Even if this is really weird."

Zuko wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "I hope you realize Mom's likely to practically adopt you. Fire Nation Lady Mother, with a family-less Avatar wandering around between meetings and research? And _she_ spent her childhood listening at Ta Min's knee."

Aang flushed to the point of his arrow.

Zuko reached for the handle of the door.

"Are there any more secrets you need to tell me?" Aang asked.

Zuko hesitated, then picked honesty. "The night after we found Shyu, I had a vision of what would have happened if you _hadn't_ run away."

"And?"

"It was bad, Aang. All the resources that went toward finding you went to conquering the Earth Kingdom and annihilating the Southern Water Tribe. All that was left was the Northern Water Tribe and a few airbenders holding out in the Earth Kingdom wilds -- and if I understood the vision correctly, they had abandoned nearly _everything_ that made your people who they were. Fire Nation children were being given training on surviving _suffocation_ attacks."

Tears of horror welled up in Aang's eyes. "And me?"

"Please, don't ask me that, Aang," Zuko pleaded. "Please."

Aang seemed to accept that as a sign of just how bad that reality could have been. "Is there anything else?"

"And later that night, Roku decided to demonstrate that he does indeed know where I sleep."

"You had a vision from Roku?"

Zuko smiled. "He wanted to congratulate me on my coronation, of all things. And tell me to stop judging myself so much."

Aang managed a smile.

"And I asked him about Shyu. He said that Shyu has the favor of the spirits, and that he will recover, and I quote, 'enough'."

"'Enough'?"

"Cryptic, isn't it?"

"Yeah. The old Avatars seem to be like that."

"Good."

Aang looked confused.

"Means Great-Grandfather wasn't picking on me."

"He wouldn't," Aang assured him as he reached past him for the door handle.

They started down the hallway, each with an arm hitched over the other's shoulders, walking towards the family and friends waiting on them.


End file.
